Another great fire which took place A.D. 80,--the same in which Titus dedicated the Colosseum,--and which raged three days and nights, destroyed the region of the Circus Flaminius, including some of the finest temples of the city, and especially on the Capitoline, and created the necessity for new improvements. These were made by Domitian, who rebuilt the Capitol itself with greater splendor on its old site, and erected several new edifices. Martial speaks with peculiar admiration of the Temple of the Gens Flavia. [Footnote: Martial, _L_., ix. Ep. 4, 35. ] He also erected that beautiful arch to his brother Titus which still remains one of the finest monuments of the imperial city. The Odeum, a roofed theatre, was erected by him, capable of holding twelve thousand people. He also made many additions to his palace on the Palatine--so lofty, that Martial, his flatterer, described it as towering above the clouds, and Statius compared the ceiling to the cope of heaven. [Sidenote: Forum Trajanum.] [Sidenote: Basilica Ulpia.] No great improvements were made in the city until Trajan commenced his beneficent and splendid reign. His greatest work was the Forum which bears his name, to which allusion has been made, eleven hundred feet long, in the centre of which was that beautiful pillar, one hundred and twenty-eight feet high, which is still standing. The Forum, the Basilica Ulpia, and the temple dedicated by Hadrian to Trajan, were all parts of this magnificent structure, one of the most imposing ever built, filled with colossal statues and surrounded with colonnades. [Sidenote: Temple of Venus and Rome.] [Sidenote: Mausoleum of Hadrian.] [Sidenote: Hadrians Villa.]